FACT - Foundation for Art and Creative Technology

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0151 707 4444

All information is drawn from or provided by the venues themselves and every effort is made to ensure it is correct. Please remember to double check opening hours with the venue concerned before making a special visit.

FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) has been leading the UK video, film and new media arts scene for 20 years with groundbreaking exhibitions, education and research projects. The organisation aims to pioneer new forms of artistic and social interaction with individuals and communities.

During its history, FACT has commissioned and presented over 250 digital media works with artists including Pipilotti Rist, Bill Viola, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Vito Acconci and Isaac Julien.

FACT is a member of LARC (Liverpool Arts Regeneration Consortium), a partnership of eight of the leading cultural organisations in Liverpool set up to help ensure that the cultural sector plays a significant role in the regeneration of the Liverpool City Region. The organisation is based in the heart of the RopeWalks area of the city and is central to the regeneration of the area.

Collection details

Exhibition details are listed below, you may need to scroll down to see them all.

Exhibition (permanent)

Audible Generosity

17 September 2012 — 31 December 2017 *on now

FACT is a charity and depends on funding bodies and donations to keep our galleries free and to continue to bring people, art and technology together. In summer 2012, we began thinking about a way to make it easier - and more fun - for our visitors to help support us while they are in the FACT building. Being the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, we were never going to be satisfied with a traditional donations box, so we teamed up with architects FVMA and design consultancy Smiling Wolf to create something extra special.

Audible Generosity is inspired by games found at traditional amusement arcades like Penny Falls, but there is more to this game than meets the eye - and the ear.

The 4-metre long bespoke box has been fitted with 12 piezo microphones that pick up vibrations made when coins touch the wooden surface. These sounds are then fed through a mixing desk installed inside the box and heard through directional speakers located close by.

Suitable for

Family friendly

Website

Connecting Cities

1 January 2013 — 31 December 2015 *on now

A three year project, funded by the European Union’ Cultural Programme, Connecting Cities is a worldwide expanding network aiming to build a connected infrastructure of media facades, urban screens and projection sites to circulate artistic and social content.

Each year is themed around a different vision (networked city, participatory city and visible city), producing an average of twelve cultural projects to connect the various locations and their citizens.

Suitable for

Website

Human Futures

Which community do you engage with the most ­ your neighbourhood or your Facebook network? Due to new technologies, we need to revise our view of the world and our position within it.

Human Futures is a project centred around a series of artist residency exchanges between cultural partners in Europe and Canada, that offers a glimpse of what the future community might look like. The artists engage with local communities and concerns, and invite citizens to participate in shared encounters. The aim is to open up new, international platforms for dialogue and explore the future of sharing within the Cognitive Space, Digital Space, Living Space and Urban Space.

With FACT tackling the theme of Cognitive Space, Liverpool will host Canadian artist Darsha Hewitt in collaboration with Liverpool ­based artist Sam Meech.

Suitable for

Family friendly

Website

Networked Narrative

1 May 2014 — 30 November 2016 *on now

Young people from across Burnley, Hull and Wigan are at the heart of this project. Over the duration of the project they will work closely with artists and a wide range of professionals to actively have a say and influence over the decisions involving three digital art commissions for both online and public spaces, which will involve their local library. The commissioned artworks will then tour to libraries across the North of England.

Suitable for

Family friendly

Website

Group Therapy: Mental Distress in a Digital Age

5 March — 17 May 2015

Works by artists, designers and researchers including new commissions from The Vacuum Cleaner, Katriona Beales, Kate Owens & Neeta Madahar and Quintan Ana Wikswo as well as restaged work from Ubermorgen will encourage visitors to rethink their understanding of mental health and wellbeing, by asking how far our personal wellbeing is related to the values of the society we live in and the impact of new technologies.

Vanessa Bartlett, who is co-curating the exhibition with FACT’s Director Mike Stubbs, says ‘Group Therapy proposes that art and the creative use of digital devices can challenge dated ideas about mental illness, helping to reduce stigma and encourage open discussion about our personal wellbeing.’

The exhibition design, created by researcher and PhD Student at Royal College of Art Benjamin Koslowski, is carefully considered to evoke self-reflection and introspection by highlighting the threshold between the private, individual experience of the exhibition and the societal dynamics behind mental health issues.

Supported by Wellcome Trust and the The British Psychological Society (BPS), the major new commission Madlove by The Vacuum Cleaner responds to the artist’s own experience of psychiatric hospitals as punishing rather than loving environments. A collaboratively designed asylum will be created at FACT as “a safe place to go mad", appropriate for a society where all of us experience emotional distress. Madlove features advisors from across the health, higher education and science as well as design sectors, including principal partner the Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, University of Liverpool.

Group Therapy explores the past, present and future of mental health, and includes Superflex’s video installation The Financial Crisis, which explores how modern economic systems have the capacity to leave us all feeling insecure and vulnerable.

The history of mental illness is highlighted from different perspectives. A photographic series of American asylum buildings by artist Quintan Ana Wikswo evokes the hyper-vigilant eye movements of post-traumatic stress disorder, offering viewers the opportunity to experience reality through the eyes of an individual marked as an outsider by the impacts of trauma or social injustice. By showcasing spaces formerly reserved for the mentally ill, she also provides insights into the historical context of mental illness and its surrounding power structures. Dora Garcia's film The Deviant Majority features an interview with Carmen Roll formally of the German Socialist Patient's Collective (SPC) who in the 1970s argued that capitalism is responsible for manifestations of madness. An electroconvulsive therapy machine shows how technology is not a new concept in mental health settings.

Part of the exhibition is also an interactive archive showing 20 years of FACT projects for participants with mental health issues, in which artists have been working closely with the community in creative projects as well as created digital tools that support mental health. These projects have been organised in collaboration with various mental health organisations, including Mersey Care NHS Trust.

Suitable for

Website

Group Therapy: Mental distress in a digital age

5 March — 17 May 2015

Originating from FACT’s extensive work within mental health and wellbeing, the exhibition explores the complex relationship between technology, society, and mental health.

Works by artists, designers and researchers including new commissions from The Vacuum Cleaner, Katriona Beales, Kate Owens & Neeta Madahar and Quintan Ana Wikswo as well as restaged work from Ubermorgen will encourage visitors to rethink their understanding of mental health and wellbeing, by asking how far our personal wellbeing is related to the values of the society we live in and the impact of new technologies.

Part of the exhibition is also an interactive archive showing 20 years of FACT projects for participants with mental health issues, in which artists have been working closely with the community in creative projects as well as created digital tools that support mental health. These projects have been organised in collaboration with various mental health organisations, including Mersey Care NHS Trust.